Battered

 

Two days ago I began crunching the numbers for the next article as the yarn was all in hand.  I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do, but I needed to do some serious thinking about how I would get there in the most efficient way.  I want to use all one warp for each of the two warp yarns, but it was going to require at least 4 resleyings, so I wanted to make sure I knew what I was going to do, when, before I set it all up.

Unfortunately my brain is still not fully functional.  I had been expecting to take an hour or so and have it all in hand, but after spending an hour with calculator, samples, ruler (to do ruler wraps), and lots of scrap paper to write down my conclusions, I realized that I was far from done.  

And I was, frankly, exhausted.  When I came upstairs I could barely talk and I was cross-eyed with fatigue.

All the thinking I had already done about the project no longer made sense and I realized I'd extrapolated the wrong way round.  

Yesterday I went back to my work table and shuffled through the paperwork, spotted some errors, re-crunched the numbers again, thought about what I expected would be going to happen with these experiments, and re-checked the numbers, changing one sample.  Again.  For the 4 or 5th time.

Which made me feel like recovery was still a long way away - which it is, given the 24 month recovery everyone has been telling me.  

However, by the time I finished re-checking my numbers when I shut the studio down for the night, I *think* I have a workable plan.  Since this experiment is something I've never done before, I am leaving myself open to changing things again once I get started.

But that's the thing with working things out.  You try and see what happens.  And you add to your foundation of knowledge.  Gradually, layer by layer, you learn.  And then in the future when you run into something you have not done before, you rummage around in that foundation and see what makes sense, what 'fits', and you extrapolate.  And then you put your conclusions to the test and see if you've correctly figured things out.

So I'm expecting to weave and wet finish the first set of samples, and then I'll know if they show something worth writing up or if I have to re-calculate and weave more.  

Expecting to need more warp for just the samples I've currently got planned, I will plan to weave more.  And, if I don't, I will use the balance of the warp to weave some more towels.  

I will look the numbers over again today, and if they seem to make sense I will begin working out the length of warp I will beam (the width/# of ends is already determined), and when the current warp comes off the loom next week, the experimental warp will go on.  

And I'll do the number crunch for the 2nd warp for the article.  

Will I stop assuming that my brain is back to fully functioning?  Probably not...